ADAPTING COPYRIGHT TO THE INFORMATION ... - IViR

present copyright system does not protect each genre equally; in most European
countries, e.g., a computer program is better protected than, say, a novel 5 . Moreover, in
many countries the rightholder's exploitation rights are defined in platform or genre
specific terms: right of printing, right of broadcasting, right of cable distribution, etc.
Convergence of roles
As the Internet experience clearly demonstrates, traditional actors in the communications
process (information producer, provider, publisher, intermediary and user) will take on
new roles in the digital networked environment. The Internet is structured as an `open
platform model', as opposed to the `broadcasting model' of most existing mass media. On
the Internet authors may freely disseminate their works without the intervention of
traditional publishers: authors are becoming `publishers'. Moreover, digital technology
enables users to actively search and manipulate information available on the network:
users are becoming authors. Furthermore, traditional intermediaries, such as university
libraries, may take on new roles as information providers: intermediaries are becoming
publishers as well. This convergence of roles may eventually affect the existing system
of rights allocation in copyright and neighbouring rights legislation.
1.3 Communicating on the superhighway: a change of paradigms?
The digital networked environment of the superhighway represents a change of
paradigms for the traditional copyright industries. Mass circulation of copies carrying
identical information products is replaced by transmission of customized information on
demand. In this process, the `public sphere' between information provider and
information user is gradually dissolving. 6 The act of `publishing' thereby loses much of
its original connotation. The increasingly `private' nature of information distribution on
the superhighway is amplified by the increasing use of encryption techniques.
Information on demand
The superhighway infrastructure enables users to actively communicate with information
providers: interactivity. Users can retrieve information of their choice from information
banks at innumerable points on the network. Conversely, publishers and other
information providers will `customize' information to accommodate specific user
demands, employing detailed `user profiles' drawn up from previous usage patterns. In
this process of interactive and customized information usage, the information product
will gradually lose its `concrete' form of expression. Instead, the product will merely
serve as a source file for an infinite variety of derivative information products on
demand.
Interactivity and customization combined will make existing (or future) legal distinctions
between `stand-alone' and collective works (such as audiovisual works and databases)
difficult to maintain. On the superhighway, the collective work will rarely be consumed
5 Pursuant to the European Software Directive, supra note 3, most copyright exemptions that apply to
ordinary `writings', e.g. for private copying, are not valid in respect of computer programs.
6 Th. Dreier, `Copyright digitized: philosophical impacts and practical implications for information
exchange in digital networks', paper presented at WIPO Worldwide Symposium on the Impact of
Digital Technology on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, Harvard University, 31 March - 2 April
1993, p. 11-14.